Christy Writes: Remembering to Look Down

I’ve been on an internet detox lately, curtailing my usage to the point that some days I don’t go online at all. I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is my own mental health. I find that a steady diet of social media and online news alters my psyche in not-good ways. I’m also deep into my new book and doing a lot of reading, both of which are better for me in both the long and short-term than anything the internet could drag in and drop in my lap.

But probably the biggest reason I decided to do this internet detox is that I needed to remember to look down.

I’ve always been a downward looker. I like little things – flowers pushing stubbornly up through cracks in the pavement, sidewalk chalk art, various tiny life forms whose entire focus at the moment I see them is staying out from under my shoes. Looking down netted me a twenty dollar bill once, but it’s worth pointing out that I was already a downward looker when that happened, and looking down just in the hopes of finding money defeats the purpose. Also it hasn’t happened to me since.

I do look up, of course, to exchange smiles with strangers or to make sure I haven’t inadvertently walked to the edge of the earth. But I find that looking down connects me with so much life on this planet that is easily overlooked from our comparatively great height. As a little girl I loved to watch birds, squirrels, bees, even ants as they went about their business. A budding writer even then, and one who had learned to read in the anthropomorphic worlds of Peter Rabbit, the Berenstain Bears and later the Chronicles of Narnia, I was fascinated by the fact that all of these creatures had lives and routines and a role to play in making the great machine keep working.

But the truth is, my phone (everyone’s favorite modern scapegoat) was keeping me from looking down. Or at least from looking down at anything other than its shiny, smooth, comfortingly scuffed screen. It gave me music when I was out for a walk, told me the time, kept track of how far I’d gone and at what pace, and fed me email and texts the way a mother funnels Cheerios into a fussy toddler.

The detox started one morning when I was out after a heavy summer rain the previous night. I was messing with my phone when something on the sidewalk caught my eye. It was a worm, a fat and confused little nightcrawler, that had been washed out by the rain and was now squinching along the pavement in the hot sun, blindly seeking the soil. I put my phone away and gently carried the worm over to a nearby garden.

I didn’t take my phone back out for the rest of the day.

I’ve never been one of those people who believes that my life is of more value than any other creature simply because mine happens to take this form. I’m a share-the-earth kind of girl. Giving that worm a lift reminded me how far I’ve drifted from my old days of communing with nature and the three-dimensional world. Communing with the internet just doesn’t leave me feeling the same at day’s end.

Bees on Flowers

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